When I read the news in June 2016 that Trevor WONG will close down his Write Price Supermarket after 35 years in business, I decided to travel, with his permission, to Wairoa of Hawke’s Bay to visit him. After retirement, he would spend time enjoying water sports and motor biking. To connect his career with his retirement, I photographed his portrait on his treasured motor bike inside the supermarket with the half-empty shelves. All goods were to go in another few days and the hustle and bustle dynamic of the supermarket would linger on.

Finding an inherited object for me posed a challenge to Trevor. He introduced me to his cousin, Mike WONG in Napier, who has a memorable plaque of the family tree. It lists the family members from the 19th to 22nd generations with the family dictum: “To withstand hardship and pass on our wisdom [to the next generations] one must be faithful to the old, be upright, and expand the good name of the ancestors who have valued good character”.

Mike WONG: “The Wong family memorial plaque is written in classical Chinese. It was written in 1930 when 23rd generation, James Chung Kwong (Truelight, 松光) WONG took his sons David, Peter and Henry back to China to receive a Chinese education. The original of this plaque and the spirits of the ancestors were brought back to New Zealand in 1998 after the remains of all the ancestors were re-interred in a family plot in the ancestral village of Gwah Leng [瓜嶺村] on the outskirts of Guangzhou, China.”

I took both photographs with the ‘Truelight’ illuminating the central axis (the text on the plaque and the bike’s headlight) in a theatrical style. For the Chinese, the family dictum is ‘Truelight’ that will shed light to the future generations.